President Barack Obama’s latest mortgage-refinancing proposals haven’t received much support from congressional Republicans. But a few of the ideas are backed by Glenn Hubbard, the dean of Columbia Business School and an economic adviser to Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Mr. Hubbard recently co-authored a paper that essentially endorses one of three refinancing proposals the Obama administration advanced earlier this year. This proposal would have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pay the closing costs for underwater homeowners who refinance into shorter-term loans. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.) has introduced a bill to implement it.

The program works like this: A homeowner who owes 117% of his or her home’s value and who received a 30-year loan at 6.7% five years ago could refinance today into a 15-year loan with a 3.1% rate. The borrower would pay down debt faster while boosting the monthly payment by just $24.

By accelerating the amortization, the homeowner would have equity in less than three years—assuming home prices stay flat—and he or she would have a loan-to-value ratio of 83% in five years. Doing nothing, that borrower would be underwater for more than seven years.

Mr. Hubbard and his co-author, Christopher Mayer of Columbia, have been pushing for more widespread refinancing of government-backed loans since late 2008. “It would help reset expectations in a big way in the housing market,” Mr. Hubbard said in an interview with MarketWatch last summer. Mr. Hubbard and his co-author have, at times, criticized the administration for not pressing harder to liberalize refinancing of loans that Fannie and Freddie already guarantee.

Last October, the White House revamped an existing program, called the Home Affordable Refinance Program, to achieve many of the ends advocated by Mr. Hubbard and his colleagues.

One was the accelerated amortization proposal supported by Mr. Hubbard.

The second proposed fine-tuning HARP after Fannie, Freddie, and their regulator resisted a handful of technical changes last fall. Sens. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) and Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) have introduced a bill to make that happen. Mr. Hubbard’s paper has also advocated for some of those changes.

The third administration fix would extend refinancing of underwater mortgages to borrowers with government-backed loans. Mr. Hubbard told the Washington Post earlier this year he didn’t support that administration proposal.

So does Mr. Romney support either the Boxer-Menendez bill or the Merkley bill—or any of the other refinancing initiatives put forward by Mr. Hubbard? If he does, his campaign isn’t saying right now. A campaign official told Developments that Mr. Romney believes the best approach for the housing market is to engineer a robust economic recovery.

Political analysts say a vote on the two bills could happen when Congress returns from recess in September.

Mr. Romney has discussed housing only a handful of times so far, usually ahead of Republican primaries in Florida and Nevada, where foreclosures are still a big problem. He offered the following last fall in Las Vegas:

Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom. Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes, and let it turn around and come back up. The Obama administration has slow walked the foreclosure processes that have long existed, and as a result, we still have a foreclosure overhang.

In January, he moderated that view when he said the following in Florida:

The idea that somehow this is going to cure itself by itself is probably not real. There’s going to have to be a much more concerted effort to work with the lending institutions and help them take action, which is in their best interest and the best interest of the homeowners.

The political challenge with responding to the housing crisis is that any meaningful intervention requires spending money or forcing someone—taxpayers, investors, or homeowners—to take losses, which is bound to upset some voters. Advocating in favor of doing less, meanwhile, could upset other voters who believe the government has done too little.

Just ask Sen. John McCain. While running for president four years ago, the Arizona Republican floated an idea to have the government purchase troubled loans and restructure them, a plan that was far more ambitious than anything Mr. Obama has proposed. Mr. Obama criticized the idea at the time as a bank bailout. “The politics were never going to work,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mr. McCain’s former economic adviser, who added that he no longer supports such an idea.